Lois Bujold - Weatherman

“Yes, sir.” Miles’s face was set like glass. The general had a right to skin him with a vibra-knife, if he chose—in private. The authority lent Miles by his uniform barely balanced the deformities that made him a target of Barrayar’s historically grounded, intense genetic prejudices. A public humiliation that sapped that authority before men he must also command came very close to an act of sabotage. Deliberate, or unconscious?

The general was only warming up. “The Service may still provide warehousing for excess Vor lordlings at Imperial Headquarters, but out here in the real world, where there’s fighting to be done, we have no use for drones. Now, I fought my way up through the ranks. I saw casualties in Vordarian’s Pretendership before you were born—”

I was a casualty in Vordarian’s Pretendership before I was born, thought Miles, his irritation growing wilder. The soltoxin gas that had almost killed his pregnant mother and made Miles what he was, had been a purely military poison.

“—and I fought the Komarr Revolt. You infants who’ve come up in the past decade and more have no concept of combat. These long periods of unbroken peace weaken the Service. If they go on much longer, when a crisis comes there’ll be no one left who’s had any real practice in a crunch.”

Miles’s eyes crossed slightly, from internal pressure. Then should His Imperial Majesty provide a war every five years, as a convenience for the advancement of his officers’ careers? His mind boggled slightly over the concept of real practice . Had Miles maybe acquired his first clue why this superb-looking officer had washed up on Kyril Island?

Metzov was still expanding, self-stimulated. “In a real combat situation, a soldier’s equipment is vital. It can be the difference between victory and defeat. A man who loses his equipment loses his effectiveness as a soldier. A man disarmed in a technological war might as well be a woman, useless! And you disarmed yourself!”

Miles wondered sourly if the general would then agree that a woman armed in a technological war might as well be a man . . . no, probably not. Not a Barrayaran of his generation.

Metzov’s voice descended again, dropping from military philosophy to the immediately practical. Miles was relieved. “The usual punishment for a man bogging a scat-cat is to dig it out himself. By hand. I understand that won’t be feasible, since the depth to which you sank yours is a new camp record. Nevertheless, you will report at fourteen-hundred hours to Lieutenant Bonn of Engineering, to assist him as he sees fit.”

Well, that was certainly fair. And would probably be educational, too. Miles prayed this interview was winding down. Dismissed, now? But the general fell silent, squinty-eyed and thoughtful.

“For the damage you did to the weather station,” Metzov began slowly, then sat up more decisively—his eyes, Miles could almost swear, lighting with a faint red glow, the corner of that seamed mouth twitching upward, “you will supervise basic-labor detail for one week. Four hours a day. That’s in addition to your other duties. Report to Sergeant Neuve, in Maintenance, at 0500 daily.”

A slight choked inhalation sounded from the corporal still standing behind Miles, which Miles could not interpret. Laughter? Horror?

But . . . unjust! And he would lose a significant fraction of the precious time remaining to decant technical expertise from Ahn. . . . “The damage I did to the weather station was not a stupid accident like the scat-cat, sir! It was necessary to my survival.”

General Metzov fixed him with a very cold eye. “Make that six hours a day, Ensign Vorkosigan.”

Miles spoke through his teeth, words jerked out as though by pliers. “Would you have preferred the interview you’d be having right now if I’d permitted myself to freeze, sir?”

Silence fell, very dead. Swelling, like a road-killed animal in the summer sun.

“You are dismissed, Ensign,” General Metzov hissed at last. His eyes were glittering slits.

Miles saluted, about-faced, and marched, as stiff as any ancient ramrod. Or board. Or corpse. His blood beat in his ears; his chin jerked upward. Past the corporal, who was standing at attention doing a fair imitation of a waxwork. Out the door, out the outer door. Alone at last in the Administration Building’s lower corridor.

Miles cursed himself silently, then out loud. He really had to try to cultivate a more normal attitude toward senior officers. It was his bloody upbringing that lay at the root of the problem, he was sure. Too many years of tripping over herds of generals, admirals, and senior staff at Vorkosigan House, at lunch, dinner, all hours. Too much time sitting quiet as a mouse, cultivating invisibility, permitted to listen to their extremely blunt argument and debate on a hundred topics. He saw them as they saw each other, maybe. When a normal ensign looked at his commander, he ought to see a godlike being, not a, a . . . future subordinate. New ensigns were supposed to be a subhuman species anyway.

And yet . . . What is it about this guy Metzov? He’d met others of the type before, of assorted political stripes. Many of them were cheerful and effective soldiers, as long as they stayed out of politics. As a party, the military conservatives had been eclipsed ever since the bloody fall of the cabal of officers responsible for the disastrous Escobar invasion, over two decades ago. But the danger of revolution from the far right, some would-be junta assembling to save the Emperor from his own government, remained quite real in Miles’s father’s mind, he knew.

So, was it some subtle political odor emanating from Metzov that had raised the hairs on the back of Miles’s neck? Surely not. A man of real political subtlety would seek to use Miles, not abuse him. Or are you just pissed because he stuck you on some humiliating garbage detail? A man didn’t have to be politically extreme to take a certain sadistic joy in sticking it to a representative of the Vor class. Could be Metzov had been diddled in the past himself by some arrogant Vor lord. Political, social, genetic . . . the possibilities were endless.

Miles shook the static from his head, and limped off to change to his black fatigues and locate Base Engineering. No help for it now; he was sunk deeper than his scat-cat. He’d simply have to avoid Metzov as much as possible for the next six months. Anything Ahn could do so well, Miles could surely do, too.

Lieutenant Bonn prepared to probe for the scat-cat. The engineering lieutenant was a slight man, maybe twenty-eight or thirty years old, with a craggy face surfaced with pocked sallow skin, reddened by the climate. Calculating brown eyes, competent-looking hands, and a sardonic air which, Miles sensed, might be permanent and not merely directed at himself. Bonn and Miles squished about atop the bog, while two engineering techs in black insulated coveralls sat perched on their heavy hovercab, safely parked on a nearby rocky outcrop. The sun was pale, the endless wind cold and damp.

“Try about there, sir,” Miles suggested, pointing, trying to estimate angles and distances in a place he had only seen at dusk. “I think you’ll have to go down at least two meters.”

Lieutenant Bonn gave him a joyless look, raised his long metal probe to the vertical, and shoved it into the bog. It jammed almost immediately. Miles frowned puzzlement. Surely the scat-cat couldn’t have floated upward. . . .

Bonn, looking unexcited, leaned his weight into the rod and twisted. It began to grind downward.

“What did you run into?” Miles asked.

“Ice,” Bonn grunted. “’Bout three centimeters thick right now. We’re standing on a layer of ice, underneath this surface crud, just like a frozen lake except it’s frozen mud.”